


For every promise, there is a price to pay

by bythunder



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, F/M, Post S7, show!canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 02:53:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12202449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bythunder/pseuds/bythunder
Summary: Jon comes home to Winterfell to face the consequences of his decisions.





	For every promise, there is a price to pay

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from @weasleyrose on tumblr  
> “You never loved me, you loved what I could give you.”

Jon wasn’t expecting this to be a warm homecoming. No, since bending the knee to Daenerys, he knew the Northern houses and the lords of the Vale would be displeased. To say nothing of Sansa… she hasn’t written him in ages, leaving the correspondence to her steward. The letters weren’t her words, weren’t written in her hand, but they carried Sansa’s ire all the same. But if he could be alone with her, if he could only explain that this was the only way. For the safety of the North, of all of Westeros. They needed Daenerys. He had to make Sansa understand and then she could sway the bannermen, she was good at that.

But the greeting, or lack of, that he received upon arrival at Winterfell caused him to doubt. From every rampart hung a Stark banner, crisp and clean and proud. A clear message to the Dragon Queen that the Starks still ruled here. Jon was grateful he’d convinced Daenerys to wait behind in White Harbor until he could sort this out himself. The open defiance in the banners, she would see the insult there. He could only imagine what a meeting between Sansa and Daenerys might be like, cool and stubborn against a fiery temper. No, emotions ran too high on both sides for either woman to be willing to reach an alliance yet. And if Daenerys threatened his sister with dragonfire, he wasn’t sure if he could intervene.

The Stark banners weren’t the only thing to give Jon pause. Along the battlements, soldiers patrolled with crossbows nocked and at the ready. He caught glimpses of archers through the arrow slits. Every gate was closed to him and armored guards had been stationed at the portcullis. It looked like a castle ready for war. When he urged his horse closer, the guards dropped the spears low and called for him to halt. “Who goes there?”

“Jon Snow, Warden of the North, and Lord of this castle. I command you open the gates.”

“We don’t recognize the authority of the false lord. We are under command of Sansa Stark, Queen in the North and of the Vale. No one enters without her leave.”

 _Queen Sansa?_  How long had he been gone before she took up that mantle? “Alyn, you know me. Open the gates. I must see my sister.”

“I’m sorry, your Gr— I mean, Lord Snow. She forbid entry, I cannot go against orders.”

He cursed under his breath. Stubborn girl. “Fine, then send word that I’ve returned. It is important that we speak and soon. Winter—”

“—is coming. Aye, my lord.” Alyn nodded to the other guard who then ducked inside the guardhouse. A moment later, he returned, assuring Jon that the queen would know of his arrival.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sansa kept him waiting, on purpose no doubt, for hours. It was near dark when the call was finally made for the portcullis to be raised and Jon’s party allowed through the gates. Jon’s belly rumbled, but supper had already come and gone, he would need to search for scraps in the kitchens. He could ask the maids to boil water for his bath while he was at it. He wanted to wash off the stench from his journey and perhaps tame his hair before he met with Sansa. But he could do neither. Jon had barely passed his horse off to a stablehand when a page appeared at his side to escort him to the Lord’s solar. Or he supposed it was the Queen’s solar now.

And Sansa looked every inch the queen. Not in the way Daenerys did, with her hair done up in elaborate coils, adorned in fine silks and jewels. Sansa’s regality came from somewhere inside her, the square of her shoulders, the tilt of her jaw. That severe look that rooted a man to the spot before her. Every inch the Northern Queen.

It unnerved him, the way she was looking at him now. Like he was a penitent come to beg forgiveness for his indiscretions, although isn’t that exactly what he was? He knew that he would have to explain himself, his decision to swear fealty to Daenerys, when Sansa had counseled against his even meeting with her. But he wouldn’t let on just how she discomfited him. He was a man grown, he’d been king once, he refused to cower before the judgement of his sister. “Sansa. I’m glad to be home again, I was away too long. Where… Arya and Bran, are they here?”

“They’re here,” She said, her tone aloof. “They came home.”

“Will they be joining us tonight? I should like to see them.”

“You will. Tomorrow. But tonight, we need to discuss what you’ve done.”

“Sansa, please. I’m weary, I wish to see my family. To eat, to rest. This can wait till the morrow.” He’d been eager to return to her, since landing in Dragonstone, he had done nothing but mark the days till he could come home again. Despite how they argued, Jon valued Sansa’s counsel above all others. He couldn’t count how many times he wished to have her advice as he petitioned Daenerys. But now that he was here before her, he was… scared. He didn’t want to have this fight with her. Just a few more hours in his sister’s good graces, please.

She refused to grant him that once small peace though. “It cannot, Jon.”

“Sansa—”

“You gave away the North, Jon. Our home. Your kingdom, that you left in my hands to protect. Would that I could have been able to protect it from you.”

“Do you think I gave it away idly? That I fell to my knees as soon as she looked at me? I refused. A hundred times, she bid me kneel or burn, and a hundred times, I refused her.”

“Ninety nine times, perhaps,” she jibbed.

Ah, there it is. That special spark of irritation that only Sansa could ignite in him. “You don’t know what happened, you weren’t there.”

“No, I was here. Here, in Winterfell, making sure my brother and sister had a home to return to. Cleaning up the messes you left behind. Every day, I had to put down one lord or another who complained about their king abandoning his people in their darkest hour. ‘Jon hasn’t abandoned us,’ I would tell them, ‘He would never turn his back on the North.’ I fought every single one, in your name, to hold together your kingdom. And how do you repay me? By sending a raven, ‘I’ve bent the knee to the Dragon Queen.’”

“I had no choice. We need her dragons. There are more important things than arguing about titles and thrones. The Night King’s army grows, even as we speak. When the Army of the Dead—”

“You still think I don’t believe you, that I’m ignorant to the threat we face, but I’m not! I believe you, but you’re too narrowminded. You are only considering what will happen if we lose, but I’m concerned about what’s going to happen when we win. Winterfell will be hers. The North subject to the tyranny of her dragons. Everything we fought for, what Robb died for, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Of course it means something to me. This is my home as much as yours. But none of it means anything if we’re all dead.”

Sansa’s nostrils flared and her lips thinned into a tight pink line. That expression when she was small would always be followed by a screech and a stamp of the foot, but such actions belonged to childhood and not with a queen. “The lords won’t accept her. Many of them still recall what her father did to our grandfather and uncle. They still carry the scars of Robert’s Rebellion.”

“Daenerys is not her father. She doesn’t— She  _won’t_ burn people.” If he believed it, he could make Sansa believe it as well. But even as he lied, he could smell the unholy char of burning flesh in his nostrils.

“You can bend your knee, Jon, but you cannot bend mine. You cannot force all your subjects to kneel either. They chose you for their king, but they do not choose Daenerys Targaryen as their queen.”

“Aye, they chose you,” Jon said with a snort. It hadn’t taken him all too long to figure out just how Sansa came into her new title. He could only imagine Littlefinger’s self-satisfied smirk as he whispered poison words into Sansa’s ear as the lords proclaimed ‘Queen in the North!’

“Because you left them. You asked of them something they could not agree to. You broke faith first, why don’t you see that?”

“I didn’t break faith! They chose me for their king, I never asked for it, but I took my appointment seriously. Being king, a man must make difficult decisions, but I believe the choices I made are the best for my people. We cannot survive the Long Night without her dragons, and after… Daenerys will be a good queen. She cares for those who would be her subjects. She—”

“—Is a stranger. What does Daenerys Targaryen know of the North? Of our people, our customs? Let her take the rest of the kingdoms, and I’ll be glad of it, she can be no worse than Cersei Lannister, but that woman will not have the North!”

“Will you fight that war, sister? When Daenerys comes to claims what she believes is hers? Will you ride out against her dragons to fight for your kingdom?”

Sansa lifted her chin and declared, “With the entire North at my back, I will meet her on the field if I have to.”

Jon remembered how she looked at the head of an army, the Knights of the Vale charging in behind her to finish the Battle of the Bastards. Beautiful and lethal, a warrior queen. But that was men against men. Why did she refuse to acknowledge the dangerous power of the dragons? Better to ride with them than against. “You always knew the histories better than any of us. Surely you recall Torrhen Stark, the last King in the North?”

“The King Who Knelt, of course I remember. He knelt to Aegon the Conqueror so that the lives of thousands of Northmen would be spared what the men of the West and the Reach suffered,” Sansa recited. “But you’re incorrect about one thing, Jon. He was not the last King in the North. Robb Stark was. My brother, and yours.”

“Aye, he was.” Jon didn’t need to be reminded, but Sansa seemed to. “But Robb is dead now.”

“Murdered, because he dared to fight against an unjust king. He died for the North’s right to be an independent kingdom once again. Why will you have his death be in vain?”

“Robb died because he put his faith in a faithless man. Robb died because he fell in love and broke his promises to his bannermen.”

“I told you to be smarter than Robb, and here you are following in his footsteps exactly. Or did you bed the Dragon Queen for another reason?”

Jon was taken aback. “—How do you know about that?” He hadn’t told her, he hadn’t told anyone. What transpired that night on the ship, it had stayed between the two of them. Or so he thought. Who could have told?

“You don’t deny it?” Her tone was confusing. She wasn’t fighting him anymore. It was instead like she was begging, pleading for him to tell her the charge was false.

It wasn’t false. He wouldn’t lie to Sansa, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit another failing either. “I don’t see how that has anything to do with this.”

“I love you, Jon. Which is why I can’t bear to see you make the mistakes as Robb!”

His laugh was harsh and ugly, even to his own hearing. “That’s rich. You love me. Hah.”

“Don’t mock me!”

“You never loved me, you loved what I could give you.”

“What?”

“Winterfell, the entire fucking North, I gave you a kingdom. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? To be a queen. And you’ll be damned if anyone tries to take that away from you now. If I’d died fighting Ramsay—”

“—I would have died with you! You stupid, stupid man. You don’t understand.”

“What is there to understand?”

“I  _love_  you, Jon. I love you, not as a sister loves her brother, but as- as-” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She’d been hurt by too many men professing their love for her to believe that a love between man and woman could be anything but pain or manipulation. But her unspoken meaning hung heavy in the air between them.

Sansa was right, Jon didn’t understand. How could she feel that way for him? She was always so pious, so pure. He was the shameless bastard, lusting after his own sister. He fought it, he denied it, he tried to supplant the feeling by allowing himself to lay with another woman. No matter how he tried, the perversion only grew. “Sansa, this isn’t right.”

She closed her eyes and turned her back on him. She never liked for him to see her cry. “Don’t- don’t speak. Please don’t say another word.”

“You say something like that and expect me to stay silent?”

“No, Jon. You  _still_  don’t understand. You— you need to speak with Bran.”

“What has Bran got to do with any of this?” He couldn’t follow her line of thinking.

“He… he  _knows_  things. I don’t really understand how, but he says he has visions. About the past, about the future.” Her gaze returned to him. “He’s seen things about you.”

His skin had been on fire while they argued, but the way she spoke now gave him chills. “What has he seen?”

“Go talk to Bran.”

 


End file.
